“What a waste,” Bossy mumbled, and they resumed their descent down the tunnel.
“She’s a fighting ring dark horse,” Agracia chuckled, nodding her head toward her companion. “She don’t know anything else but tossin’.”
“Dark horse?” Jetta asked. Not a second later the little girl was on top of her, wedging a knife under her chin and pinning her back against the catwalk.
“Means nobody expected nothing of me,” Bossy said, rolling the lollipop over to the other cheek with her tongue, “but I won every time.”
Jetta kept herself from retaliating by reminding herself of her predicament. It would do no good to kill her guides, especially since she had so little knowledge of Earth and no way to communicate to the Alliance about her position. She needed to heal—then, even if she couldn’t find a com station, she would have enough strength to contact her sister. After that, she could do whatever she liked. Soon these two punks will find out what I’m really capable of.
“Fair enough,” Jetta said.
Bossy gave her a wink and pulled out her lollipop with a popping sound. “Best you remember that.”
“I need a doctor,” Jetta said, struggling back to her feet. “I can’t make it much farther than this.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t welcome here,” Agracia said. “Gonna be tough. Not too many Scabbers like military around, especially an ugly one like you.”
Jetta stopped and leaned against the wall, fighting against the seismic pain shooting up her legs. “Do you know anybody that could help?”
Agracia shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
The Scabber duo walked ahead, Jetta shuffling behind them in silence until they reached a two meter long flatbed car.
What the hell? she thought, regarding the rusted gears meshed together with odd looking parts. Is that a crank lift?
Jetta despaired. It looked like someone half-heartedly assembled a bunch of scrap and junk. That’s got to be 19th century engineering.
“Nothing here really works right,” Agracia said, pulling Jetta on top of the lift. Jetta collapsed, breathing hard and rolling on to her back to keep an eye on the pair. “So just keep your fingers crossed.”
With a series of loud grunts, the two Scabbers managed to engage the gear shift. Pumping furiously, they put the lift on the descending rails. The lift platform groaned and shrieked against the cradle as they picked up speed on the rickety track.
“Hold on to your panties!” Bossy laughed, leaning over the front of the car and spreading out her arms.
Jetta lost any sense of distance as they plunged into Earth’s depths. Overhead lights, sparse and half-functioning, winked past and disappeared into the dark curvatures of the tunnel.
“Agracia... what kind of name is that?” Jetta asked, hugging her bad arm against her side.
Agracia eyed her as she braced herself against the railing. “If you worry about that too much, you and me are gonna go for a toss.”
Jetta closed her eyes and searched again for Jaeia amidst the hissing white noise of pain. Her sister’s tune, a whisper in a stadium full of noise, lay out there somewhere in the unfathomable distance, fully engaged in whatever troubled her.
Swallowing the hot lump in her throat, Jetta tilted her head back, and with every bit of strength she had left, reached out.
BACK ABOARD THE STARBASE, Jaeia caught a lift in the docking bay, speeding down the hallways and corridors until she reached the briefing room. Inside, she found the head of every department sitting anxiously in their chairs, waiting for the debriefing to commence. Usually calm and collected, Chief Commanding Officer Gaeshin Wren appeared unsettled, clicking his laserpen on and off repetitively until the security commander whispered something to him.
Jaeia took her place between DeAnders, the director of military research, and Admiral Unipoesa at the rectangular conference table.
“Good to see you, Jaeia,” Unipoesa said, nodding to her.
“Admiral,” she acknowledged.
As she logged into the holographic interface at her seat, the mounting tension in the room scraped across her nerves.
Gods, she cringed, rubbing her temples. I can’t handle all of their anxieties.
Concentrating on her slowing her breathing, Jaeia gradually withdrew her awareness from the room’s psionic clamor to give herself enough space to think. Things must be worse than I thought.
Damon leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Forgive me, Jaeia, but you look like you’re not feeling well.”
Everyone—from her troops to her superior officers—had been saying that lately. She looked down at her reflection on the conference table, hiding her thoughts behind a smile. “It’s just a cold. I’ve already been to medical. Thanks.”
“Your attention,” the Military Minister said, taking his post behind the podium. “This is a critical matter, so I will get straight to the point: What we think is a Deadwalker ship has been spotted in sector 101-79, just outside regulated territory. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before.”
The Military Minister pointed to the holographic projection in the center of the conference table. Gasps and murmurs filled the room. An enormous alien ship, about fifty times the size of any known Motti vessel, rotated on a central axis. The top of the ship, shaped like a black crescent moon, mounted a semi-elliptical central structure with protrusions jutting out of the main hull like spiny antennae. What looked like tentacles dangled beneath the superstructure, reminding Jaeia of pictures she’d seen of Old Earth’s extinct jellyfish.
“The ship appeared on our remote radar about twelve hours ago, and this is the image we constructed using our long-range scans,” the Minister said. “Even at that distance, we’ve already received reports of unusual activity.”
“What kind of unusual activity?” Jaeia asked.
The Minister nodded to Gaeshin Wren. Leaning forward in his seat, the CCO answered her question. “Primarily communication blackouts. Any long-range contacts are mostly gibberish, unintelligible—as if people have lost their minds.”
“Is it some kind of bioweapon?” DeAnders said.
“Unconfirmed,” Razar said. “We can’t get any ships out there fast enough, and we lose contact with anyone who makes it within sensor range, including our own scout ships.”
“Chief,” Razar said, standing to the left of the podium.
The chief of intelligence, Msiasto Mo, took the podium, standing completely erect. In accordance with his Chinese-Nahvari customs, he spoke just above a whisper but in a matter-of-fact way about what the military satellites had detected. “We’ve analyzed the design against known Motti technology but are unable to confirm its engineering or its primary function. We have, however, theorized that they are unable to achieve greater than x10 break-light speed given their mass and energy expenditure.”
“If they can’t maneuver well, then they’d have to avoid close contact with enemy starcraft,” Unipoesa suggested. “And since the ship is too massive to jump, maybe they’re jumping their weapons to their targets instead.”
“Like bioweapons,” Wren added. “Perhaps some kind of neurological disease. That would explain the gibberish on the long-range coms.”
As she stared at the image rotating on its projection axis, Jaeia became aware of the blood rushing in her ears, of every breath she took. Her pulse turned into a whisper, then a shout, until thousands of lost voices rose up in her chest, screaming for release.
—The thing with the burning red eye.
Jahx’s pain—
(Our pain.)
Death. Destruction.
“I thought the nightmare was over,” she whispered, recoiling against the resurgence of emotions.
No, the Deadwalkers had been eradicated during the post-war cleanup. At least that’s what the official statements reported, and what she chose to believe.
It was all I had, she thought, grinding her knuckles into the armrests. Moral ramifications of genocide aside, she felt both relief and pain knowing that her b
rother, though already freed from the captivity of his Liiker construct, had been physically destroyed. That thing would no longer have hold of him—or seek out her and Jetta.
A hint of nausea licked at the back of her throat. The possibilities are endless if the Motti and their Liikers have somehow survived, especially if they still control a crop of telepaths, she reasoned. Just the fact that they have emerged, especially with severely reduced numbers, means that the weapon they possess is something catastrophic.
Reviewing the alien ship’s design on her personal holographic interface, Jaeia intuited a possibility that chilled her to the bone. This craft isn’t like any other we’ve seen before from the Motti. What if they don’t mean to convert Sentients into Liikers?
(Death is coming.)
“I can confirm that it is Motti. And that the ship is a massive communications dish.”
Everybody in the room turned to her.
“How can you confirm that, Commander?” the Minister asked.
Jaeia closed her eyes, her mouth suddenly dry. Perhaps it was a gleaned memory she had inadvertently acquired while exposed to the Motti, or something she subconsciously learned communicating with the converted telepaths in psionic limbo. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew she was right. “Trust me.”
“It is plausible,” Msiasto Mo said. He turned to Jaeia and bowed slightly. “Your observation is noted, Commander. We will consider that possibility.”
“But how would a communication dish cause massive blackouts?” Damon Unipoesa asked.
All eyes fell upon her again.
Jetta—I need you. I wish you were here. “I can’t explain that right now.”
Razar cleared his throat and stepped back to the podium. “CCO Wren and Chief Mo will coordinate our next move. I want Research and Intelligence teams to stay involved in the proceedings. We need all civilian posts notified and escorts sent to remote starposts. Our first priority is protecting the citizens. Dismissed.”
After the debriefing concluded, Jaeia lingered, waiting to have some alone time with the Military Minister. Damon Unipoesa stayed, too.
“We need to find Jetta,” Jaeia said to the Minister. “We’ll need her for this.”
“We’re doing everything we can, Jaeia,” the admiral said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “You know that.”
Jaeia looked at the image of the massive Motti ship and rubbed her hand along the smooth edge of the conference table’s mahogany finish.
“I’ll need Triel’s help. Maybe she can help me find her.”
“Of course, Jaeia,” Razar said, trying too hard to sound amenable.
Dissatisfied, but knowing no other recourse at the time, Jaeia turned to leave. Before exiting the conference room, she paused. “The Motti have something terrible otherwise they never would have resurfaced. I have a feeling this isn’t about the survival of their species anymore.”
Her theory was met with silence, and as she pushed her way through the double doors, her thoughts inevitably returned to her worst fear.
Jahx.
Chapter III
Torturing Reht Jagger was a dangerous move, but Tidas Razar pushed the authorization through before he could fully weigh the consequences. As much as he disliked the dog-soldier captain, it had to be acknowledged that Reht wasn’t just another scum mercenary. Reht had friends and advocates, important ones who the Military Minister needed to stay in service to the Alliance.
But right now the Alliance needed the key more than ever. Even slow moving, the Motti ship would eventually reach the Homeworlds with whatever disease or method of destruction it harbored. Any tactical advantage, especially the mass teleportation potential of the Narki’s flash transport device, would increase their odds in battle.
Most of all, he needed it. He had to know. Is Senka alive? To have family again, I would—
(No. I can’t have these feelings.)
He didn’t like the crushing waves of emotion, a weakness that crippled him ever since the dog-soldier captain suggested her survival. Hope rekindled old sentiments he had spent years burying. A man in his position couldn’t afford to feel; the consequences would tear his soul apart.
Tidas Razar heard the muffled screams through the steel doors long before he stepped into the sectioned interrogation cell. Elite guards held the dog-soldier captain down, forcing him to watch the gruesome scene unfold in an adjacent cell. Although it was nothing more than a Spinner replication, Reht didn’t know the difference, and watching his first mate, the Talian, torn apart by laserwires was too much for the captain to bear.
“Gods—please—stop! You don’t have to kill him! PLEASE!” he screamed.
Tidas nodded to the guards monitoring Jagger’s vital signs and stress levels as he pulled back the partition and stepped to the captain.
“Ah, Reht Jagger. How are we?”
“You chakking pig!” Reht screamed, tears streaming from his eyes. The guards yanked the dog-soldier back by the hair and gave him a sizzling zap from their blue shockwands.
Razar’s knees ached, but he managed to stoop down so his eyes leveled with the dog-soldier’s. He pulled a cigar from his uniform breast pocket—one of Jagger’s favorites—and lit it, blowing the smoke right into Reht’s face.
“Your first mate isn’t dead—just inoperative,” Tidas said as guards hauled away the massive, broken body parts of the spun Talian. “The Orcsin is next. We’ll pull his wings off before taking his eyes out. Your choice, Jagger.”
They couldn’t have elicited anywhere near this level of pain if they had tried corporal torture. All the psychological evaluations concluded that one of Reht’s greatest weaknesses was his crew, especially Triel, but she was too valuable for Jagger to believe they would torture her just to inflict pain on him.
“Please stop,” Reht sobbed as the guards released his head. “Please...”
Knees popping, Tidas stood back up and looked the captain over. That bastard’s going to lie now, both to protect the rest of his crew and his investment. I have to push him further.
The Military Minister chewed on the end of the cigar, stroking his chin. It would have to be something Reht wouldn’t be able to withstand, something that would shatter his deepest reserves.
“Leave us,” Razar said. The elite guards saluted and disappeared behind the mirrored walls.
Razar circled the dog-soldier captain, taking his time. “I know why you keep your hands bandaged, Reht.”
Holding his head in his hands, Reht stayed kneeling on the floor, rocking back and forth. Tidas wasn’t sure if he was listening, but he kept going.
“After all these years you could have had Triel heal them for you, but you’ve resisted. It’s your reminder, your penance. You think that by keeping those scars you’ll atone for your sins.”
Reht glared at the Minister, his eyes red and swollen. “Chak you. After all the jobs I’ve pulled—you’re a chakking bunch of backstabbers!”
Tidas ignored him. “And now you’re doing it again. You’re forsaking your family; their blood is on your hands. Give me the key, Reht, and I will end this now. I will send you back with the remainder of your crew, and you can leave this ship. I want nothing more to do with a washed-out piece of sycha like you, the disgrace of Elia, the shame of your family—the rot of this galaxy.”
He grabbed Reht by his hair and, being heavier and stronger than the captain, pushed him to the ground, driving his knee into Reht’s chest. “Give me the key, you mukrunger.”
Mukrunger. Reht’s native language; Elian for weakling, traitor. The word carved into his acid-scarred hands.
“What are you doing?”
The adrenaline pumping in the Minister’s veins, the thrill that strengthened his grip, suddenly dissipated at the sound of Jaeia Kyron’s voice.
“Commander, you are not authorized to be here,” Tidas said, straightening up and catching his breath.
Tidas Razar turned around, collecting himself as best as possible. Exposed, he struggled to r
estrain his thoughts and emotions with Rai Shar.
Jaeia’s eyes never left his face. “On the contrary; I have security clearance.”
He wiped the sweat from his brow and motioned for the guards to take Jagger away.
“You chakking betrayed me!” Reht screamed as he was cuffed and dragged out of the room.
The expression on Jaeia’s face reminded him of Jetta, making him nervous.
“You promised you wouldn’t harm them,” she said. “That was part of the deal. If you had a problem with them, you should have come to me.”
Razar shot a look at the two security monitors that had allowed Jaeia entrance as he led her out of the holding area.
“They were only following protocol,” Jaeia said. She paused as they passed the interrogation chamber where the guards laid out the injured Spinner’s replication of the Talian warrior on stretcher. Pressing her hand into the glass, Jaeia watched as the medics extracted the little green worm from the mutilated body.
“Did you hurt the Spinner too?” Jaeia asked as blood and intestines spilled from the replication’s abdominal cavity. “I thought standard practice was to remove the Spinner before... using the replicated body.”
He thought to lie to her, but he had already placed himself in a compromised position. In truth, keeping the Spinner, a green, worm-like Sentient that could “spin” living flesh, inside the replicated body until right before death elicited the best simulation. This proved exhausting and dangerous for the Spinner, but the Alliance generously funded and compensated their homeworld, enabling the Spinner government to offer up more of its citizens to volunteer for interrogation replications.
The Military Minister changed his tone to reflect his authority. “Needless to say, Commander, this is a delicate situation which merits alternative methodology.”
Tidas Razar made a motion across his neck, signaling to the security monitors to cut off the recording devices as they entered an empty briefing room. He waited for the telltale click and the flicker of the lights before continuing.
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